Cosmological parameters from the first results of boomerang

The anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation contains information about the contents and history of the universe. We report new limits on cosmological parameters derived from the angular power spectrum measured in the first Antarctic flight of the Boomerang experiment. Within the framework of models with adiabatic perturbations, and using only weakly restrictive prior probabilities on the age of the universe and the nubble expansion parameter h, we find that the curvature is consistent with Rat and that the primordial fluctuation spectrum is consistent with scale invariant, in agreement with the basic inflation paradigm. We find that the data prefer a baryon density Omega (b)h(2) above, though similar to, the estimates from light element abundances and big bang nucleosynthesis. When combined with large scale structure observations, the Boomerang data provide clear detections of both dark matter and dark energy contributions to the total energy density Omega (tot), independent of data from high-redshift supernovae.